Believe it or not, missionaries have bad days too. In reading different missionary biographies in the past, I've gathered that, as a whole, the church doesn't want to hear about the bad days. They don't want to hear about weeks without a single salvation and days when you feel discouraged as heck. They don't want to hear about when the language barrier is too intense to keep up a conversation or when people you've visited for weeks won't come to their door to talk to you.
I'm here to tell you the truth:
Missionaries have bad days, too.
I want to be able to tell you that everything has been perfect since I've been here. I want to be able to say that every ministry day has been filled with amazing conversations and conversions and healings. I want to be able to tell you that I haven't struggled with my self-worth, that I've been completely confident in sharing the Gospel, and that there hasn't been a moment when I wanted to just go back home where I'm comfortable. But that's not the truth. Yesterday I had a bad day. It was a field work day filled with shack-to-shack ministry, and I felt like nothing significant happened at all. We talked to one lady we have visited before, but her English is so limited, we could hardly hold a conversation. Then we went to another family we met two weeks ago, but our conversation about the Gospel was pretty much non-existent. The last place we went, we ended up waiting for one of our friends to get back home to talk to them about a Gospel of John we gave him, and ended up waiting there with his family for over two hours. Sometimes conversations just don't go anywhere.
Even only being here for a month and a half, I feel the pressure that most missionaries feel: to make everything look good. It's not so much an appearance thing as it is a validity thing. You ask for an enormous sum of money to go make a difference in a foreign country, and you feel the pressure to show your supporters that you are. But the truth is, it's not our place to determine if we're making a difference or not. The majority of the time, God works in ways we can't even see. The most impactful encounter I have this year may be one to which I never give a second thought.
God has been teaching me to value the hard moments. Every encounter, every hard day, every time I wish I could just be home, God is using to refine me and teach me new things. He's growing my endurance so I will obey Him even when it looks like nothing is coming of it. He's teaching me to be vulnerable and just come out and say it: I have bad days, even on the mission field in South Africa.
The point of all this is just to say that God uses everything. He works through things we may never place significance on. So trust God. He knows what He's doing, even if it looks like nothing is happening. He's working everything out for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. We just need to rely on Him for every breath, every day, every conversation, praying and asking God to work through us, even in ways we can't see.
